Lifelines: Marian Engel's Writings by Christl Verduyn (review)

HUMAN1TIES 331 comparison with Yeats and Joyce.' This is whatwas earlyhoped for and not seldom expected of Kinsella, but John does not really argue the case, and it might be objected that two or three~ at least, of the other poets mentioned above have equal or better claims. Whenever John puts Kinsella's work in contextwith that ofother poets he is illuminating~ and many readers would doubtless welcome more of it, for, though the ranking of the poets may not be of much interest, the course that (Irish) poetry has run is immediately relevant to what Kinsella's work amoW1ts to. What is the character of this work that has emerged from the 'double shadow of Yeats and English verse'? 'English verse' in this context means Keats (for soul-making) and others~ one of the most powerful of the others being (as for other poets fearful ofa Yeatsianyoke) W.H. Auden, particularly for theearlier Kinsel1a~ whose work is alsoprofoundlymarked by its affinities (as John and Heaney agree) with that of the greatest Dubliner of them all. What, to good effect, John mostly concentrates on, is the reading of individual works and particularly of those that - sometimes through revision, more often through form and theme - constitute the links between Kinsella's collections and hence serve to trace the 'accumulating' poem. John's demonstration of the importance of Kinsella~s attempt at a continuous poetic discourse, articulated in reaction against 'the notion of a II complete" poem' and not through sequences, is one of the most valuable features of his timely study. (MICHAEL J. SIDNELL) Christl Verduyn. Lifelines: Marian Engel's Writings McGill-Queen's University Press 1995. viii, 278. $55.00 cloth, $22.95 paper 'I was born to be in wrong with the feminists, who don't realize that I invented them,' Marian Engel once complained. Christl Verduyn's thoughtful book proves Engel's prediction to be wrong. She begins by situating Engel's writings within the context of theoretical issues such as life-writing and the construction of the subject and goes on to demonstrate that Engel's irmovations anticipate contemporary feminist concerns. Although she makes obligatory gestures in the right directions, finding the proper labelfor Engel is not Verduyn's main goal. She chooses, instead, to hold up the 'umbrella concept of revision.' 'For Engel,' she argues, 'the writer's job was one of seeing and "devising different methods of seeing."' Verduyn argues that in order to do this job, Engel's writings depart 'from linear narrative and the delineaHon ofgenres.' She herself, by contrast opts for a linear organization that follows the chronological double line of Engel's life and writings. This conventional format sometimes leads her into reductive conclusions. Indeed, this book is a rather odd (but not uneasy) cobbling together of recent feminist theory and New Critical oppositions. Engel is described, for example, as evolving 'in fits and starts 332 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 towards tills synthesis [of imagination and experience], a formula that was at last successfully produced in Sarah Bastard's Notebook.' This neat 'line,' however, is belied by Verduyn's thoughtful readings of individual texts. She seems to signal awareness of this by invoking the idea of meaning 'between the lines,' but this leads her into an amusing circle: if a position in 'the space between' is postrnodern, then Engel's work, she concedes, might be postmodern. Luckily, she does not waste time spinning her wheels mthis circle. rt is true that the book is marred by the wobbly theoretical context. After citing feminist theory to support an anti-essentialist view of the self, for example, Verduyn goes on to write without irony about Engel's search for her 'real true self.' Verduyn's unpretentious and even eccentric method, however, yields surprising dividends. She explores archival material and unpublished work, remaining open and receptive throughout. The book that results is neither a conventional 'writing life' nor conventional literary criticism. Neither fish nor fowl, it is a moving tribute to Marian Engel precisely because it evades the categories. To do her justice, Verduyn does work towards a conclusion that breaks out of the New Critical formula - something to do with a "'sisterly" alternative...